February 3, 2008:

After a couple of days in South Africa, we’re adjusting to our new time zone. All participants are here now, and we’re setting up our shipboard labs. The vessel has 4,000 square feet of lab space shared among several projects. View the ship’s webcam.

Our thoughts are focused on our teamwork, and we are practicing our CTD (conductivity, temperature, and depth) operation, which involves deploying and retrieving a large array of water collection bottles mounted on a room-size framework. The sample bottles are set up to open at a specified depth. We’ll have to be prepared to do this under harsh conditions. A front is passing through, and we’ll contend with 8 to 10 foot seas, or possibly higher, out the gate. RV Roger Revelle, 273 feet long with a 52.5 foot beam (max width), has 4,070 square feet of working deck space, from which we’ll deploy and retrieve apparatus. Our vessel has 9 feet of freeboard (distance from waterline to deck). Though it could be dicey, we’re mentally prepared. Here are some more vessel facts.

Our ship departs at 1600 hours Monday Feb 4 — that’s noon, Eastern time, back home in Tallahassee. Cruising speed is 12 knots —15 max. About 4 hours out, we’ll enter the powerful Agulhas Current, a western boundary current carrying warm water southward along Africa’s east coast. We’ll ride the Agulhas, paralleling the coast for the first week or so until we intersect Longitude 30° East, our transect line. During the coming week, we’ll tell you more about the Agulhas and other surface ocean currents relevant to this study. Ciao for now...